Read From the Ocean from teh Stars for Free Online Page A

emerge from the shark's mouth.
    "No thanks," said Franklin hastily, hoping she would not be offended. "Please don't let me interrupt your work."
    He guessed that she was barely twenty, and was not surprised at meeting an unfamiliar girl on the little island, because the scientists at the Research Station did not have much contact with the administrative and training staff.
    "You're new here, aren't you?" said the bloodstained biologist, sloshing a huge lump of liver into a bucket with every sign of satisfaction. "I didn't see you at the last HQ dance."
    Franklin felt quite cheered by the inquiry. It was so pleasant to meet someone who knew nothing about him, and had not been speculating about his presence here. He felt he could talk freely and without restraint for the first time since landing on Heron Island.
    "Yes—I've just come for a special training course. How long have you been here?"
    He was making pointless conversation just for the pleasure of the company, and doubtless she knew it.
    "Oh, about a month," she said carelessly. There was another slimy, squelching noise from the bucket, which was now nearly full. "I'm on leave here from the University of Miami."
    "You're American, then?" Franklin asked. The girl answered sol emnly: "No; my ancestors were Dutch, Burmese, and Scottish in about equal proportions. Just to make things a little more complicated, I was born in Japan."
    Franklin wondered if she was making fun of him, but there was no trace of guile in her expression. She seemed a really nice kid, he thought, but he couldn't stay here talking all day. He had only forty minutes for breakfast, and his morning class in submarine navigation started at nine.
    He thought no more of the encounter, for he was continually meeting new faces as his circle of acquaintances steadily expanded. The high- pressure course he was taking gave him no time for much social life, and for that he was grateful. His mind was fully occupied once more; it had taken up the load with a smoothness that both surprised and gratified him. Perhaps those who had sent him here knew what they were doing better than he sometimes supposed.
    All the empirical knowledge—the statistics, the factual data, the ins and outs of administration—had been more or less painlessly pumped into Franklin while he was under mild hypnosis. Prolonged question periods, where he was quizzed by a tape recorder that later filled in the
    right answers, then confirmed that the information had really taken and had not, as sometimes happened, shot straight through the mind leaving no permanent impression.
    Don Burley had nothing to do with this side of Franklin's training, but, rather to his disgust, had no chance of relaxing when Franklin was being looked after elsewhere. The chief instructor had gleefully seized this opportunity of getting Don back into his clutches, and had "sug gested," with great tact and charm, that when his other duties permitted Don might like to lecture to the three courses now under training on the island. Outranked and outmaneuvered, Don had no alternative but to acquiesce with as good grace as possible. This assignment, it seemed, was not going to be the holiday he had hoped.
    In one respect, however, his worst fears had not materialized. Frank lin was not at all hard to get on with, as long as one kept completely away from personalities. He was very intelligent and had clearly had a technical training that in some ways was much better than Don's own. It was seldom necessary to explain anything to him more than once, and long before they had reached the stage of trying him out on the synthetic trainers, Don could see that his pupil had the makings of a good pilot. He was skillful with his hands, reacted quickly and accurately, and had that indefinable poise which distinguishes the first-rate pilot from the merely competent one.
    Yet Don knew that knowledge and skill were not in themselves suf ficient. Something else was also needed, and there